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Potted Beef

A preserved beef mixture cooked slowly, then minced and seasoned, packed in pots with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potted Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Place lean beef in a jar with a little water.

  2. Cover the jar.

  3. Place the jar in a deep saucepan of boiling water.

  4. Simmer gently for 5 hours.

  5. Remove the beef.

Make the potted beef

  1. Mince the beef very fine.

  2. Pound the minced beef in a mortar with pepper, salt, and mace.

  3. Add 6 ounces of butter and mix well.

  4. Fill small pots with the mixture.

Seal and store

  1. Pour clarified butter over the top to keep air out.

  2. Tie down with paper.

  3. Store in a cool place.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the meat that is slowly cooked, then pounded into a spreadable texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the mixture a smooth, spreadable texture.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pounded beef.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 5 hours. Gentle heat in a sealed jar cooks the beef slowly and evenly without toughening it. Boiling hard or uneven heat can make the meat dry and stringy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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